Parent-Child Communications with Self-Identified out Gay Men: Their Communication Styles

Rationale. We explored the attributes that made parent-child communications more effective when addressing issued related to sex, sexuality, and HIV, with self-identified gay males.  

Background/Purpose. Simple basic communication is often a difficult and arduous process, especially when addressing sensitive topics.  One example occurs when parents and gay males discuss topics and issues related to sex, sexuality, and/or HIV.  Limited research on this subject, showed that generally, gay males were more likely to reveal their sexual orientation and spoke more openly to their mothers about sex and sexuality.  However, no know empirical studies have been identified, that explored in-depth the stylistic aspects of communications with this sub-population.

Method. Single one-on-one participant telephone and face-to-face interviews, ranging from 45-90 minutes, were conducted in 2016 with N = 14 unique self-identified out gay males ages, R_a 18-30. They were asked to retrospectively recall their parent-child communications on sex, sexuality, and HIV.  All consented interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Analyses were conducted using iterative inductive and deductive procedures associated with thematic analysis.  Identified themes and codes were subsequently discussed with 3 participants taken from the larger pool of participants for validity purposes.

Findings. Findings revealed that conversational styles with gay males about sex fell on a continuum of poor, below average, average, above average and excellent.  Conversations deemed poor were often: a) completely dismissive, b) superficial and generic, c) emasculating, d) used scare tactics, e) invoked religion, and f) invoked ultimatums. Conversely, conversations deemed excellent were often: a) timely and frequent, b) used age appropriate language, c) acknowledged parental limitations, d) reinforced and normalized sexuality, e) provided external support, and f) discussed the sexuality continuum.  Participants revealed that all parental conversations with them either improved over time, or fluctuated back-and-forth as a result of personal comfort levels and their mutual understandings of sex and sexuality. These vacillations were based on: a) parental knowledge about how to live with a gay son, b) the son’s inability to accurately describe, and/or explain his own sexuality, c) some ingrained parental religious beliefs, d) parentally conflicted gender and role expectations of their son, e) parental education levels and, f) parental exposure to other GLBT individuals. Results indicated that most parents often did not address HIV/AIDS content effectively because of their own personal experiences with family and friends who died from HIV. 

Implications. These findings provided a nuanced do’s and don’ts communication checklist, that could be helpful for all parents when initiating, and/or engaging in conversations about sex, and/or sexuality with adolescents, and specifically gay men.  Similarly, results indicated that such communications often resulted in closer parent-child relationships with parents developing differential attitudes and beliefs about homosexuality, and changed sexual health behaviors among these youth. Ultimately, both parents and children should be provided with more concrete information and supports about how to have these difficult conversations; as should frontline caseworkers, school social workers and educators, healthcare workers, and case managers.